Google has made some subtle changes to its mobile homepage and searchbox. As the Google Mobile Blog explains: The Google logo has been moved up to the top of the search results page, allowing us to increase the width and height of the search box. You can now more easily touch the larger box to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Building Instant Translator Companion Google leaps language barrier with translator phone from The Times Online reports Google is working on a new tool that would bring instant translation to people. […]
Google posted a very strong Q4, given the recession, with $6.67 billion in revenues. This beats financial analyst general consensus estimates. Here are some top-level highlights from the earnings release: Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 […]
Many publishers have complained repeatedly that Google and Google News (not the leading online news site) reduces their content to “commodity” status or otherwise adversely impacts their brands. Google’s Fast Flip is a response to this in part. It offers a more “branded” and visual way to consume news and magazine content from major publishers. […]
Yahoo has smartly launched a Spanish Language version of its mobile homepage. The company cites Census data that reflect a population of 46 million Hispanic people in the US. Yahoo also cited comScore data that show tremendous mobile internet growth among Hispanics, which is “outpacing that of all other groups, with 88% of Hispanics consuming […]
The Google Custom Search Blog announced the release of a mobile friendly Google Custom Search engine interface support for devices such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android and Palm Pre. Google will now automatically detect the device you are using to access the Google Custom Search Engine and serve up a mobile friendly version, when […]
Yesterday at the CTIA mobile conference, Yahoo Mobile SVP David Ko announced a range of upgrades to its mobile homepage. The new homepage was launched this past April. According to the statement that Yahoo put out yesterday, the homepage has been optimized for 1,900 devices. Video is also a bigger part of the experience now […]
Last week Yahoo launched its new homepage, which allows users to customize the site and improves overall usability. The centerpiece of the recently launched Yahoo homepage is My Favorites, the new customizable left column that allows users to add third party content and make it more of a personal “dashboard.” The Yahoo mobile browser homepage, […]
Mobile search engine Taptu has just launched a free iPhone app (“alternative search machine”). It’s the first iPhone-specific search engine but Taptu has been doing mobile search for some time. According to the company the engine crawls the web and indexes “iPhone friendly pages” that are optimized for the device. The index is much smaller […]
The Google Mobile Blog announced yet another shot at an optimized version of iGoogle for iPhone and Android devices. About six months ago, Google quietly dropped the iPhone optimized iGoogle, before that, they had an optimized version since January 2008. After living without an iPhone/Android version of iGoogle for about six months, Google came out […]
Until a couple of months ago, Yahoo had a range of mobile products and experiences in the market: Go, oneSearch, oneConnect and mobile web. With the launch of Yahoo Mobile earlier this year the company has been seeking to bring more consistency to the mobile user experience. Earlier today TechCrunch reported that Yahoo had “abandoned” […]
Many local businesses have long relied on incoming phone calls to drive their commerce. This is particularly true for needs-based businesses, such as plumbers or exterminators that require an initial conversation with a potential customer to determine whether a solution can be provided and an appointment should be made. This need is met over the […]
Gomez, Inc. and dotMobi have joined together to rate mobile sites across several verticals according to how well they perform on the mobile internet. The criteria and ranking methodology used included the following benchmarks: Discoverability – how readily a consumer can find the mobile Web site using different URLs. Readiness – how well the mobile […]
At the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in February Yahoo announced “Yahoo Mobile,” a more integrated presentation of Yahoo’s mobile assets and a successor to the ineffectual Yahoo Go. Mobile represents a more coherent integration of what what had been a fragmented collection of mobile properties: oneSearch, Go, oneConnect and onePlace. This evening the […]
In Barcelona at the GSMA Mobile World Congress event, which has been mostly about new handsets so far, Yahoo announced what it’s calling “Yahoo Mobile.” I haven’t yet been able to talk to anyone at Yahoo about this, but it appears to be mostly a rebranding and repackaging of existing Yahoo mobile assets, with a […]
The Google Books Blog announced they have now created a mobile version of Google Books. If you have an iPhone or Android phone just navigate your mobile browser to https://books.google.com/m to start using Google Book search on your mobile device. There are many differences between the mobile version and the regular version. The most obvious […]
I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google seems to have quietly dropped the iPhone version of the iGoogle page. The iPhone iGoogle page used to be at google.com/ig/i, but when iPhone users navigate to google.com/ig/i they are redirected to the standard mobile iGoogle page at google.com/m/ig. Google said the reason they […]
Photo search took a couple steps forward today with announcements from both Yahoo and Google. The news from Yahoo is a mobile makeover of its Flickr photo sharing site, while Google announced a variety of improvements to its Picasa photo service. Here’s a look at the two announcements:
The venerable local arts and entertainment guide Citysearch, which has, in the last couple of years, confronted a new generation of challengers (mostly notably Yelp), launched a broad redesign last night. The comprehensive new site introduces the ability to get more listings and content at the neighborhood level, allows users to sign in using Facebook […]
Alex Chitu has compiled a list of Google’s iPhone-made and optimized web sites. So, if you want to view them on your own browser, you can, but understand that they look a lot better on your iPhone’s browser. Here is the list of URLs Alex came up with for Google’s iPhone specific web software:
The Google Mobile Blog announced a new version of Google search for iPhone 2.x users. The new version looks more iPhone like and the search results fit better within the iPhone’s mobile Safari browser. The local results also have “Get Directions” link to the Maps app and a clickable phone number. Here are some screen […]
Yahoo has built a mobile Safari version of Yahoo Search for the iPhone. Ryan Grove, a Yahoo developer, blogged about the experience of building out the application. In short, the mobile Safari version gives you almost all of the features the normal Yahoo Search gives you, but with fewer ads and on a smaller screen. […]
I live blogged the Yahoo keynote, so forgive the disjointed notes. Frazier Miller: Rise of the Local Web, A Perfect Storm. Miller gave an engaging keynote that covered both online and mobile, user demand and advertising. Miller defined local in terms of four Yahoo properties: Search, Yahoo Local, Yahoo Yellow Pages, and Upcoming. Interestingly, Miller […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The Google News Blog announced that they have launched a special interface for the iPhone. To access it, all you need to do is go to Google.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch and navigate to the news section via the “more” link at the top right, or you can easily just go to https://news.google.com […]
Google is now reporting that it is seeing a rapid increase in mobile Internet search and usage on several platforms. According to an interview with Reuters, Google mobile product manager Matt Waddell said, “We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage. We are seeing that mobile Internet use is […]
Anyone who doubts how important mobile phones are and will become as a platform and marketing medium needs only to look at the latest Pew Internet & American Life report. Cellphones are now more important to US adults than the internet, television, landline phones, and email. In addition, an increasing number of consumers are using […]
This morning Yahoo announced a new mobile application called “onePlace.” The application isn’t yet available but appears to be an elegant mobile bookmarking system that is highly customizable and features an RSS reader. It can accommodate any type of content: news feeds, web sites, videos, images, search queries. A shorthand way to think about it […]
A New And Improved YouTube For Mobile from the YouTube Blog announces that they have improved their mobile version at m.youtube.com. The new features include: Tens of millions of added videos Community features now available on the mobile version Mobile phone uploads available within moments YouTube for Mobile is available and localized for the UK, […]
I conducted a very informal, online Search Engine Land reader survey several weeks ago on a range of high-level topics pertaining to mobile search. The ultimate number of responses from SEL readers was a small sample of 77. Mike Blumethal, a contributor to SEL who writes the Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local blog, thought […]
Several weeks ago, I asked readers to take a quick mobile user survey to get a snapshot of mobile search usage among Search Engine Land readers. It was a brief survey that sought only high-level information. We had 75 people respond to the survey, which I’ve presented in its entirety below. The results cannot be […]
The New York Times ran a kind of overview article this weekend about the mobile Web and the fact that it may still be far off as a practical matter. The article talks about different efforts, from the iPhone to Yahoo Go and recent Microsoft spin-off Zumobi, that are trying to make “surfing the mobile […]
With all the talk of Amazon’s new $399 ebook reader (and blog, newspaper, magazine) Kindle, it made me think: What if Google had developed this or a similar device (the Gindle? Goodle?) instead of putting out Android? Of course, there’s nothing that precludes Google from doing such a thing in the future, but for now […]
The Google Reader Blog announced they have added the ability to dynamically include a blogroll of your feeds on your site and that they have improved the Google Reader Mobile interface for iPhone users.
Google to focus on mobile Internet in China from Reuters reports that Google China will be re-designing their products for the Chinese user base. Lee Kai-fu, Google Inc’s president for greater China, said: These mobile users have very different usage patterns from the American users. Most Chinese users who touch mobile Internet will have no […]
Google Blogoscoped reports that the rumored Google Docs for Mobile is now live. You can search on docs or peruse a list of your documents. However, only some document types are available for viewing. Right now “word” docs are available and so are spreadsheets (although they rendered somewhat awkwardly for me), but you cannot access […]
British Telecom has invested in FON, the Spanish WiFi provider, and says it will build out a free (to BT customers), UK-wide free WiFi network. MarketWatch reports that “BT’s three million plus Total Broadband customers will be able to join the FON WiFi network, which already provides more than 190,000 hotspots worldwide. By doing so, […]
AOL is quickly and quietly moving on a number of fronts in mobile to establish itself as a leader. Not long after the relaunch of rival MSN’s WAP portal, AOL upgraded mobile search and, last week, relaunched its WAP portal with more personalization and generally greater usability. According to this BusinessWeek article, “U.S. traffic to […]
Let me preface this by saying that I am pretty tired of talking about the iPhone. But given that Apple recently sold the one-millionth unit, it’s generating more buzz around the office than ever and I have no choice. I’ve spoken more about the iPhone to clients and colleagues alike in the past two months […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.